I just uploaded another game, Idioms & Adages, at http://www.alphadictionary.com/fun/idioms_adages.html. I've long wanted to get the time to put this up and I plan to add to it periodically. I have created pictures that represent the literal meanings of some common idioms and adages to see how well they can be identified by the picture. No problems with the fonts here.

Well, I guess I don't know much about idioms and adages. I have managed to get but four of these. At least three others I'm sure I know what they mean but I can't figure out the necessary phrasing. The rest, I'm clueless as to what the picture is saying. A deficiency in my imagination, I suppose.

Yet, what does "Hint? Write [yes]" mean? I can't figure that one out, either. Can anyone give me a hint?

Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.

I got all but two on the first try. After getting a hint, I got one more. (To get a hint, type "yes" in the Idiom or Adage box and click on the question mark.) Then today, I got the last one. (I had been typing "out of the pan" when I should have typed "out of the frying pan . . . .") But in my opinion, some the pictures don't make the relationship between the elements all that clear.

I got all but one on the first try. The one I missed I feel pretty sure I had right (or at least the right idea). I wrote "you scratch my back and i'll scratch yours" but kept getting the "Hint" command. After that, I put it in several different ways but couldn't get it exactly right. Oh, well. I know I was close.

Be who you are and say what you feel in your heart. Because those that matter, don't mind. And those that mind, don't matter.

You may have made a slight error of judgment in the IDIOMS & ADAGES comments when you asked "Any other problems anyone has spotted?"

I admit that a picture to go with the adage that follows might be that of an enraged cowboy with a baseball bat raised high above a supine equine, but...

First, the instructions are too vague (or lacking entirely). The only directions are “See if you can guess the idiom or adage the picture represents. Do not use capital letters (except "I") or punctuation: commas, periods or question marks [a weakness which I've learned has been addressed]. Apostrophes are OK”.

It’s fairly intuitive that the correct answer should be put in the boxes under the heading of Idioms & Adages (tho there’s nary a clue as to the meaning or action intended by the use of the heading “Push”, nor will clicking on the heading itself accomplish anything. Only after clicking on the “I ? I” box—just to see what happens—does the player learn that “Push” is shorthand for “Click here to see if your answer is correct”. In a similar manner, the consequent message “Hint? Write [yes]”, that a wrong answer will produce, presumes that the player not only instinctively knows both that “Yes” is to be typed without brackets, and that it’s to go under the Idiom or Adage column—not in the one headed by “Hint? Write [yes]”.

My second complaint concerns several instances in which there is little agreement between a picture and it’s “correct” answer. For example, in the second drawing both the expression on the man’s face and the position of his body makes it clear that he is stuck; wedged in place; the human filling of a “boulder sandwich”. And that there’s every indication that for him to be extricated no small amount of effort would be required. Factually, he’s “caught between a rock and a hard place”—which is also the way I’ve most frequently heard the expression used.

But that answer will earn the player a mildly derisive “Hint? Write [yes]” response, as the allegedly right answer is foreshortened to just “between a rock and a hard place”. It shouldn’t take much reflection to realize that if the man was replaced with something smaller—a marble or a juju bean—leaving a foot of space on each side—the object would unquestionably be “between a rock and a hard place”, all right.

It’s that bothersome word “caught” that makes the drawing signify that contextually the correct phrase should include it; the visual clue is of a dilemma from which extrication would be difficult.

Another visual/verbal disparity is found in the sixth example. In the picture the man is pulling an obviously recalcitrant (based on the way the front legs are braced to resist any efforts to achieve motion) donkey, mule, burro, or other equine. The only other visual clues I could detect was a lake; what appeared to be a sombrero, perhaps used to subliminally suggest some sort of “south of the border” theme; and two trees. The one indisputable visual hint is the animal’s resistance to movement, making “stubborn as a mule” an easy rim shot. Except it’s another wrong answer. I don’t want to belabor the point on this one, except to say if the cartoonist thinks the front legs of a horse being “lead to water” look like those in the picture, at this instant he is possibly as close to a real horse as he’s ever been in his life.

FWIW, the adage that instantly popped into my mind was ”You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead.”

And I see I’ve frittered away so much time on this that there’s another Good Word waiting to be savored!